Error using load command to open .mat file in Matlab

Question

Here's a part of my code where I am entering a name of the .mat file, which is located in the same folder as my code. However it does not identify the file name and gives an error:

"??? Error using ==> load

Unable to read file 'q_5wells_yearly_CMG.mat': No such file or directory."

q_MethodType=input('Do you want to use q from "CMG", "TankModel" or from a saved .mat file? Enter the exact name: ','s');
q_MethodType=mat2str([q_MethodType '.mat'])
load(q_MethodType)

However if I use the load command in the command window directly as follow, then it gives no error and loads the file:

load('q_5wells_yearly_CMG.mat')

Why is it doing like this?

Answer 1

Here's a more user-friendly solution using a modal dialog:

[fileName pathName] = uigetfile({'*.mat' 'MAT-files (*.mat)'}, 'Load Data', '.');
if pathName == 0, error('No file selected'), end
load( fullfile(pathName,fileName) )

feel free to customize it as needed.